FIFA Official Agrees to Extradition, Just Not to U.S.

A FIFA official indicted by the United States on corruption charges has agreed to be extradited, but not to the United States. The official, Julio Rocha, the former president of the Nicaraguan soccer federation, consented to be extradited from Switzerland to Nicaragua, Swiss officials said Friday.

Mr. Rocha, 64, was among the seven FIFA officials arrested in May in Zurich, where they had gathered for FIFA’s annual congress. Accused of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes from sports marketing firms in connection with the sale of media rights to soccer matches, he has been in a Swiss jail since.

The United States filed a request to extradite the seven officials in July, and Nicaragua filed its own request specific to Mr. Rocha last week, the Swiss authorities said.

“The Nicaraguan criminal prosecution authorities, like their U.S. counterparts, suspect Rocha of having abused his office for personal gain,” Folco Galli, spokesman for the Swiss Federal Office of Justice, wrote in an email.

The United States authorities will be given the opportunity to consent or object to Mr. Rocha’s extradition to his home country, Mr. Galli said. The United States attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York, which brought the case against Mr. Rocha, declined to comment on Friday.

If the United States objects to Mr. Rocha’s extradition to Nicaragua, the Swiss authorities will decide which country’s request should be granted. Consideration would be given to the timing of the two requests, the Nicaraguan citizenship of Mr. Rocha and where the suspected offenses took place, Mr. Galli wrote.

The bribes said to have been paid to Mr. Rocha were transmitted through banks in Brazil; Miami; Managua, Nicaragua; and Madrid, according to the United States’ indictment. Mr. Rocha conspired with fellow defendants regarding bribe payments at meetings in Miami as recently as February 2014, prosecutors said.

He continued to solicit illegal payments, the United States has charged, even after he stepped down as head of his country’s federation in 2012. Since 2013, he has served as a FIFA development officer based in Panama, overseeing soccer development in Central America.

Only one of the six other officials with whom Mr. Rocha was held in jail has been extradited to the United States: Jeffrey Webb. On Friday, Mr. Webb, a resident of the Cayman Islands who owns property in the United States, appeared in federal court in Brooklyn for a procedural hearing. His next court date was set for Oct. 9.

Two other defendants, Aaron Davidson and Alejandro Burzaco, businessmen accused of paying bribes to Mr. Rocha and Mr. Webb, are also in the United States and are set to appear in court on Sept. 18. Excluding Mr. Rocha, 10 men remain abroad, in countries including Brazil and Trinidad and Tobago; several are actively contesting the United States’ efforts to extradite them.